BENEFIT Panel on
Systems Engineering in CEE countries
EMSYS'96, Berlin, 23-25 Sept. 1996
© BENEFIT
Today Ukraine confidently proceeds the way to an open democratic
and market society. A radical restructuring and reorganization
of industry takes place. Scientific and industrial enterprises
in the areas of information and telecommunication play an important
role in this transition process.
Still existing highly professional scientific groups and powerful
telecommunication enterprises undergo serious changes. These are
mainly the computer and informatics institutes of the Academy
of Science, the bunch of telecommunication scientific research
institutes and the industrial enterprises of Minmashprom (Ministry
of Machine Building, Military and Industrial Complex and Conversion
of Ukraine), and the research groups and institutes of the universities.
Beside the governmental enterprises, a network of small enterprises
with different forms of ownership, after an intermediate activity
in "buy and sell products", is entering up-to-date computer
and information technologies doing own developments in this field.
Achieving the modern level of microprocessor based technologies
and integration into the world´s information infrastructure
are the main problems for all those enterprises. In a first attempt,
it is necessary to aim at a modern microelectronics industry and
modern technologies in systems engineering.
In the past and to large degree at present, scientific projects
and industrial enterprises depend on manufacturers of simple microprocessors
located in the republics of the former USSR namely Russia, Belorussia
and Lithuania. These components do not correspond to the up to
date level. Many more even do not correspond to the current level
of microprocessor components produced by Ukraine enterprises.
Among the main enterprises in Ukraine are " Kvazar"
in Kyiv, "Gamma" in Zaporizja and " Rodon"
in Ivano-Frankivsk.
These enterprises manufacture digital integrated circuits similar
to members of the families SN54, SN74, SN74AS, HE4000, i8080,
FAST, i8086, i8051, i80C196 and i80C86. Additionally these enterprises
manufactured the memory chips 132 and 185 (both 1 kbit static
RAM), 556 (4 kbit PROM), 568 (ROM), 573 (256 kbit UV erasable
PROM), 1609, 1611, 1626 (16 kbit EPROM) as well as programmable
logic 1515 (up to 1.5 k gates), 1545 (up to 3 k gates), UA01-XM3
(up to 10 k gates).
Production of microprocessors like the i386 and FPGAs like those
of Altera was planned. However, the development and production
of these new component families stopped because of lack of financial
resources.
Presently it is possible to buy components abroad from such world
leaders as Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, Texas Instruments, Motorola
or Analog Devices. FPGA from Xilinx and Altera also are available
on the domestic market.
In new projects, the designers apply:
Because Ukraine microelectronics manufacturers capable to produce
ASICs and contacts with foreign ASIC manufactures do not exist,
as formerly was the case with enterprises in Zelenograd, Minsk,
Voronesch and Riga, technologies for systems engineering are poorly
developed in Ukraine.
Among the most widespread CAD-tools available in Ukraine are:
Nearly all of these facilities are PC bsed. Workstations from
Hewlett Packard and SUN are in use by only a very small number
of enterprises. A few use VHDL in simple versions.
At the same time in the above mentioned areas theoretical and
practical work is performed. The number of papers submitted by
Ukraine scientists to international conferences grew during the
last years. A lot of scientific groups started to cooperate with
colleagues from abroad either in joint projects of international
scientific programs or in direct contracts. Education of specialists
is carried out on up to date levels in the universities.
The Open Microprocessor Initiative (OMI) may play an important role in the development of microprocessor system technologies in Ukraine. Among the major tasks OMI may be helpful in the following areas:
One example in the direction of the list above is mentioned briefly.
A short paper on VHDL in the CAD/CAE-literature created a contact
between the "Lviv State University" and the "Georg-Simon-Ohm-Fachhochschule
Nürnberg". Joint activities have been initiated based
on an agreement of cooperation. Theoretical work and results achieved
by Ukraine partners are combined with state of the art resources
in ASIC design available at the German counterpart location. Currently
design work using VHDL is in progress which aims at prototype
manufacturing in the near future. More projects in the field of
non-classical computer architectures are in preparation and will
start as soon. The first short term exchange of personnel has
been funded by sponsors and the German Academic Exchange Service
(DAAD). Future cooperation on a broader scale however requires
funding for a longer period. Ukraine and German partners intend
to conform to the OMI standard when available.
Short CV of Anatoly Melnyk may be found here.